review: the da vinci code

Date night doesn't come around often - but when it does, we're fans of dinner and a movie.

Dinner was perfectly nice - the movie was. . .well. . .

Here's what I can say about The Da Vinci Code:

1. It's better than the book.

2. The book was an affront to the English language.

3. The movie's Robert Langdon doesn't carry the title "Master of Exposition".

4. The albino killer monk's skin tone varies from "Navaho White" to "Dover Chalk" to "Slightly Pink" to "Standard Caucasian". Whoever was in charge of this at the Continuity desk should receive a few lessons in powder-puffery.

5. Whole chunks of the book were (mercifully) left out, abbreviated and just plain reinvented for the movie. To good effect, mostly, with the notable exception of. . . .

6. It lacked the sexual tension between Sophie Neveu and Robert Langdon - which means that one of the central tenets of the book (in my opinion) was not just left out, but completely abandoned. No sang real for you, Robert Langdon!

7. The cinematographer deserves an Oscar.

8. I want a library like Sir Leigh Teabing's. I'd settle for the stacks of cool scrolls, incunabula, palimpsets, codexes and librams that were mouldering in that sub-basement at Rosslyn.

9. I forgot how much I miss Paris.

10. I couldn't stop thinking that Sir Teabing would - at any moment - slap on a purple helmet and get all nasty with magnetism after revealing that his true name was Magneto.

All in, not a bad movie experience, but definitely a long one (2.5 hours). Your mileage may vary.